39. Bound by Mercier.
M. Gruel, whose efforts were directed towards stemming the tide of eccentricity associated with l’art nouveau, pointed out the impossibility that a new style should spring up on demand, and recommended a return to the study of past models and a gradual transformation of these into fresh departures. M. Michel replied that a firm break with tradition was necessary in order to avoid the constant repetition of the past and the mixture of styles which had long been the only resource of the ineffective designer. It was necessary, he said, either to return to nature or to seek inspiration from other arts besides binding. So the excitement grew, aided that same year by an exhibition in the Champ de Mars in which bindings from the school of Nancy, under the direction of Wiener, achieved a notoriety which only fanned the flame. These bindings soon got the nickname of reliures d’affiche, and painting was the art from which they derived their inspiration. The book was now looked on as a canvas on which to depict in different-coloured moroccos various scenes from life or nature. In some cases the composition was not even contained on one panel, but strayed over the back to finish on the under cover. The symbolist school with its picture binding has had a considerable vogue, though not in the extreme of violent reproduction of the Nancy school. Michel was himself influenced by it, and both he and Meunier were represented in this same exhibition with subjects in relief and allegorical representations in mosaic. The next development was the sculpture binding, which Michel distinctly furthered by suggesting to Lepère that he should model a cover for the solitary copy on Japan paper of Paysages Parisiens, which he had not only illustrated, but the drawings for which he had also engraved on wood and on copper. Since that time the modelled leather work of Lepère has taken a permanent place among book covers of the day; it is masterly in conception and execution, but would be as fine and more appropriate in a panel framed on a wall than on a binding. The art of the leather worker is one, whether applied to the coffer, the blotter, or the book—it is but the shape and the purpose that defines the appropriateness or inappropriateness of any particular treatment. Marius and Lepère represent the highest point attained by le cuir incisé. Artists of their attainments are rare, and it is only such artists who can be tolerated in deviations from the normal and whose inventions can in any sense be held to justify the result. Most collectors content themselves with a specimen or two in their libraries of the sculptured or symbolic or bejewelled binding, be it ever so curious, and turn with satisfaction to the more ordered ways of some modification or another of past traditions.
40. Bound by Mercier.
41. Bound by Mercier.
To turn now from this brief account of the recent developments of French binding to the Galliera exhibition.
The books shown by M. Léon Gruel, whom his son Paul now most ably seconds, were, as may be supposed, of the highest importance. The house is one of the oldest in Paris, having been established in 1811 by Deforge, by whom M. Gruel’s father was employed. M. Léon Gruel is an enthusiast who has all the antiquarian as well as the practical knowledge of binding at his fingers’ ends. He has a fine collection of old bindings and all sorts of documents relating to them, and some of these he used for his important publication in 1887, Manuel historique et bibliographique de l’amateur de reliures, a second instalment of which appeared in 1904. The characteristic of the business has always been the production of fine editions of liturgies and books of a devotional character, which made it famous long ago, and the bindings of which have always been specially designed and carried out under the direction of M. Gruel. It would have been natural enough had he been content with the great commercial success attained by the house, due to the industry and business qualities of the direction of successive members of his family. But instead of that, it has been his ambition to show that he could with equal success follow every turn taken by the art in the various directions that its recent evolution has demanded. The styles associated with the names of Grolier, the Eves, and le Gascon, are reproduced for those clients who demand them, while the more modern mosaic work, blind-tooled or with gold, is invented and executed with equal facility. One style revived from the past, that of le cuir incisé, he has made especially his own, and he treats it in an entirely different manner to that of Marius. The difference in procedure is briefly this: the incised leather of Marius is not one with the binding, but is a thick piece of calf, worked first by cutting and modelling, and then introduced as a panel sunk into the cover. In Gruel’s method the cover is the unit on which the design is modelled while damp, then coloured, and finally hardened. To succeed in this technique needs great delicacy of handling and a constant practice in its methods. It gives plenty of scope for emblematic treatment, which, in the hands of Rossigneux, who designed much of this work in former days for Gruel, was of great artistic merit: at the present time it is executed mainly by a son of M. Bosquet, already spoken of as an important writer on the critical and technical aspects of what is also his own craft. Rossigneux was an architect and designer of surprising talent, who did not hesitate to learn the technicalities of binding that he might devote himself to the decoration of book covers, not only in leather but in carved wood, for which he was especially famous. M. Léon Gruel is the master of a large workshop to which his men are proud to belong. As President of the Chambre Syndicate he has rendered important services, freely acknowledged, in an insistence on sound teaching and a wise encouragement of the coming generation of binders. The variety of his achievement is a constant surprise even to those who know his versatility, for at each successive exhibition he seems able to add fresh laurels to those which have always surrounded the name of his house.
42. Bound by Ruban.